Photo by Melissa Blackall

Scorched
Forum Theatre at the Round House Theatre Silver Spring
Scorched may take place in North America and the Middle East, but its origins are entirely in Greek tragedies. In Wajdi Mouawad's play, two twins set off to find out about their late mother's past, and discover the devastating truth – the tragedies that befell her in her youth touch every generation of their family. The secrets they reveal are terrible and unjust, like a lightning strike or, more aptly, the spray of bullets from a Lebanese soldier during the war in which much of the play takes place. Twins Simon (Alexander Strain) and Janine (Rachel Beauregard) resist their mother's dying wish to have them find a long-lost brother and father at first, but as they soften, they settle into a deep and knowing silence. Adding a note of levity is Scott McCormick as Alphonse Lebel, the executor of their mother's will, as a man who constantly mixes up his metaphors ("We're beginning to see the train at the end of the tunnel.") Meanwhile, their mother's tragic story is played out by three different actors (Dana Levanovsky, Amy McWilliams, Rena Cherry Brown) throughout her struggle to rise above poverty and escape Lebanon alive. She does, of course, but the life she goes on to live requires a courage that Janine and Simon never knew in their mother - and one that, when all is revealed, is unfathomable to all who learn the truth.

King Arthur
Synetic Theater at Crystal City
Adding water and removing words from the tale of King Arthur not only heightens the excitement of the Synetic Theater Company's choreography, but it also allows them to play tricks on your eyes. Swords and people materialize out of the lake, and people "drown" and disappear. And splashing water and falling rain make the sex scenes sexier in an-already charged performance, aided by wet and clingy bondage-inspired costumes. But all of these things are secondary: What you'll notice first about King Arthur is that it is stunning, silent and strong. Arthur (Ben Cunis), Merlin (Alex Mills) and Lancelot (Vato Tsikurishvili) brandish their swords in some of the most tightly-choreographed fight scenes you'll see, amplified by the sheen of the lights on the splashing of water (if you sit in the first three rows, you're likely to get wet). The cast also does most of their own lighting, shining flashlights on their faces to create giant silhouettes on the side walls of the theater. Non sequitur observation: Sean Pedersen, who plays Mordred, bears more than a passing resemblance to Justin Bieber. But that's beside the point, which is that Synetic's latest is a work of brawn and beauty.

Misalliance
Olney Theatre
It's easy to see why Olney chose George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance for this season: Themes from 1909, like the futility of marriage and the failure of children to leave the nest, ring especially true today. Wealthy and spoiled Hypatia Tarleton (Patricia Hurley) is to marry Bentley Summerhays (Matthew McGloin), whom his father describes as "Overbred – like one of those expensive little dogs." Indeed, he yips and yelps across the stage as he protests the utter unfairness of Hypatia's wandering eye, which focuses directly upon his friend Percival (Alex Pudulke) who literally falls from the sky: His airplane crashes into the Tarleton home, which makes for a rather exciting set. As the characters work out who should marry whom, Hypatia complains of all the talk, and rightly so, but while Shaw's characters may be verbose, their social commentary on love, money and proper manners is deft.

Improbable Frequency
Solas Nua
The probability that Improbable Frequency was going to be a confusing, madcap journey were good: The play's competing elements - a World War II spy flick, a love story, a vaudevillian musical and a science-fiction B-movie thriller - are at odds with each other from the start, and thanks to a pun-laden script, the vaudevillian musical wins out. For a spy drama, Improbable Frequency's spies don't solve many mysteries, and when it comes to the science-fiction, the narrowly-avoided apocalypse is so opaquely described that one isn't sure whether or not the mad-scientist developed weapons are evil, or not so bad after all.
Tristram Faraday (Eric Messner), an expert solver of crossword puzzles, is recruited by the British government to spy on the Irish, who are suspected of transmitting weather conditions to the Germans in code. When he arrives, he finds himself at the intersection of two real-life celebrity visits to Ireland: That of of poet John Betjeman, working as another British spy and portrayed as an overgrown child by Chris Davenport; and German scientist Erwin Schrodinger, brought over to found an institute, and through Cyle Durkee's performance, a terrible letch. Also arousing Faraday's suspicions are Philomena O'Shea (Stacey Jackson), a simple Irish girl, and Agent Green, (Madeleine Carr) another Brit who might be up to no good.
Performed in an unfinished office space, Improbable Frequency feels quite Fringey, especially in its lack of air-conditioning (Tip: wear layers that can be peeled off as the show goes on). While the raw space contributes to the secretive, speakeasy vibe of the show, it also means that the acoustics of the room can be quite poor, with the musicians drowning out actors' voices. But nothing can drown out the sound of the puns that riddle the script (i.e., Philomena is holding a sausage and another character quips, "Philomena is ready for the wurst."), which, depending on your taste, will be worthy of applause or groans.

One Life: Katharine Graham
National Portrait Gallery
"Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published." Those words, from Nixon's attorney general John Mitchell, threw down the gauntlet for Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal, and the subject of a new Portrait Gallery exhibition that includes plenty of wringer-related memorabilia, including an old-fashioned one given to her by reporter Carl Bernstein. Graham is a refreshingly local choice for the "One Life" exhibition series, which previously has chronicled notables such as Thomas Paine and Katharine Hepburn. The centerpiece of Graham's turn is a Richard Avedon photograph of her in a knit dress, holding her glasses and looking tough as nails, but still anxious, vulnerable and feminine. Half of the exhibition chronicles Graham's social life in Washington, and the photos look as though they could be ripped out of the pages of Vogue, showing her strolling with Jackie O, or attending Truman Capote's Black and White Ball. But the specter of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate supersede her glamorous Washingtonian life, as they well should, and the best artifacts are not related to fashion - rather, they're the wringers.

David Sedaris
Lisner Auditorium
I will not try to out-Sedaris David Sedaris by trying to write something wry about his upcoming reading at Lisner Auditorium. That's a different blog entry. This one is all facts and no funny business: The This American Life and New Yorker contributor, author of seven books, and member of one of the most bizarre families chronicled in modern literature is coming to D.C. in support of his new book, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modern Bestiary. It's a departure for Sedaris, who mostly mines his strange siblings, his life in France and his drug-addled youth for material. In Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, he examines human foibles through animal characters, like that other famous Greek writer, Aesop. Surely, that is a comparison Sedaris has drawn before. Despite previous attempts detailed on today's arts blog, I've never seen a David Sedaris reading, so I don't know what to expect, other than what I've heard on NPR. And what I've heard on NPR has kept me admiring this writer's many gifts for years now, so when Sedaris talks pretty at tonight's reading, I'm hoping it will leave me speechless.

John Tsombikos: Potty-Trained at Gunpoint
The Fridge
BORF still has a lot of growing up to do. District residents may remember the then-17-year-old John Tsombikos's graffiti campaign in 2004, when he plastered the smiling visage of his friend Bobby Fisher, as well as wry messages about his own notoriety ("Bush hates BORF"), on any blank surface he could find. For that, he served jail time, performed community service, was on probation, and left the country for several years to figure out his next step. Now BORF is back, but he appears mostly unchanged. While he's not tagging on the street anymore, he's still angry: About the sociocultural forces that he believes led his friend to commit suicide, about capitalism, about authority. Most of the work in "Potty Trained at Gunpoint" is a way for Tsombikos to thumb his nose at the police and charge thousands of dollars for it, as in his series of watercolor replicas of his court documents. There's nothing wrong with that - street art is, by its nature, anti-authoritarian - but Tsombikos could comment on something broader than his own run-in with the law, with whom he continues to flirt. One series in the show depicts Tsombikos shoplifting from grocery stores, and another displays possibly-stolen surveillance cameras on placards, like hunting trophies. Tsombikos' best work has nothing to do with his crimes or punishment: It's his travel that has the potential to change him. He spent time in Europe for years after completing his sentence, and "Content," a watercolor of the x-rayed contents of his suitcase, convey the force of authority without the cheekiness of a teen who just got busted.